Modelling regional economic resilience to climate disasters: A recovery forecasting framework illustrated by the 2024 Valencia floods

Abstract The floods that struck the Valencian region (Spain) in October 2024 illustrate how climate change is intensifying extreme weather events in Mediterranean flood-prone areas, challenging regional economic resilience. This disaster, which resulted in numerous fatalities and extensive infrastructure damage, disrupted supply chains across a region already vulnerable due to decades of urban and industrial development in the area. Drawing on regional economic resilience theory and recovery curve methodologies, we present a near-real-time (early post-disaster) framework for promptly assessing climate disaster impacts on regional economic growth, based on post-event damage and administrative data and designed to be operational within weeks of the event using readily available information. Our approach combines sectoral recovery dynamics with worker-level impact data to update GDP growth forecasts, addressing a critical gap in disaster response capabilities for increasingly climate-vulnerable regions. Applied to the Valencia floods, our methodology projects differential sectoral resilience patterns: under the assumed sector-specific recovery functions, construction shows rapid recovery due to reconstruction demand, whereas agriculture shows prolonged vulnerability reflecting the sector’s exposure to climate risks. Compared to pre-flood forecasts, results indicate economic contractions of up to 0.2 percentage points in 2024 and 2025, followed by a policy-supported rebound adding 0.3 percentage points to growth in 2026. The analysis illustrates how the assumed level of government intervention may shape post-disaster economic trajectories in flood-prone regions. Beyond providing timely impact assessment, this framework could support climate resilience planning in Mediterranean and other climate-vulnerable territories, enabling policymakers to revise economic forecasts within weeks of the disaster, when policy decisions are most critical, as extreme weather events become more frequent and severe under climate change.